Research hosted and curated by AfricArxiv allows for free and quick dissemination and global engagement.
All published articles and data items will receive an open license allowing reuse (e.g. CC BY 4.0 license for manuscripts) and a DataCite DOI (digital object identifier) and be indexed in scholarly databases.
Please note: AfricArXiv is not a journal and does not evaluate the scientific quality of a manuscript in all details. Once a manuscript passes moderation and is published, it persists in the system indefinitely. We reserve the right to withdraw manuscripts after publication if fraud or plagiarism is identified.
Check for journal compliance: Use the SHERPA/RoMEO service to check journal Open access policies for further details on self-archiving options for the journal in which you plan to publish your article.
Who should submit
We encourage submissions from:
African researchers
non-African researchers
based on the African continent
based at a host institute outside of Africa
reporting on research conducted on African territory; preferably with African co-authors listed
reporting on research relevant to African affairs
Non-academic institutions
governmental institutions
non-governmental institutions
organizations with scholarly affiliation and/or focus and methodology
community-based organizations who wish to share their knowledge and protect it from misappropriation
What to submit
We accept the following types and formats:
text files
data and other file types
Research manuscripts, review paper manuscripts, project proposals, case studies, methods descriptions, technical notes
‘negative’ results and ‘null’ results (i.e. results that do not support a hypothesis)
ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier known as ORCID iD which allows you to connect and share your professional information (affiliation, grants, publications, peer review, etc.) with other systems, ensuring you get recognition for all your scholarly contributions.
Check your inbox for the email that was sent to you and follow the instructions.
Read and sign the end user agreement
Link your AfricArXiv account with your ORCID profile to log in through your ORCID account for submissions.
Set a password for your account.
Now you can log in to the AfricArXiv submission portal and add a new item.
To begin your submission, choose the community collection to create your new item in the pop-up window.
For general individual submission please choose “General Repository”.
If your submission belongs to a dedicated community collection hosted on AfricArXiv, please make sure you have access to it; otherwise, contact our support team at [email protected] to assist you.
4) Fill in all relevant fields and those that apply to your work
Upload your file
Author / Authors - please click on “+ add more” to list contributing authors separately
Title
Other titles - here you can add an alternative title, e.g. a translation of the title in your local language or a language relevant to the research topic or geographic region)
Date of issue- please add today’s date or the date the work was originally published if previously distributed)
Identifiers - please keep the listed Uniform Resource Identifier (URI); upon deposit of your submission, the system will allocate a DOI (digital object identifier) to your item to increase its discoverability. Please add another Identifier, in case you are submitting a file that was previously distributed elsewhere
Type - Please select the type of your file that applies (article, book chapter, dataset, presentation, preprint, … )
Language - Please select the language that applies
5) In the DESCRIBE section
Subject keywords - Start typing a research subject that applies to your work, you should see a list of words appear to choose from. Add any relevant keywords manually that you do not find in the listing.
Abstract
Sponsors - please list any Funders, funding codes that supported your work
Description - any other information you would like to add. Here you can point to related work this item might refer to
Deposit license - please read and confirm the deposit license, enabling us to archive and disseminate your files on your behalf.
Once you have filled all files listed above and any other that might apply, you can either Save the entry to deposit later, or click on the green button + Deposit to finalise your submission.
Our team will moderate the submission within a few days.
Please do contact us should you experience any issues during the submission process.
If you need further clarification or help to submit your work, please email [email protected]; we will be glad to assist you.
Should you have any concerns or issues submitting directly to any of the above repositories, you can share your work directly with our moderation team via this form.
Prepare your manuscript
Upload your manuscript both as a PDF and editable text file.
Once the manuscript is accepted by a peer-reviewed journal you can update the preprint to the postprint or accepted author manuscript and change this text to “This is a postprint that has been peer-reviewed and accepted at journal XXX.”
Data availability statement
Please include your data availability statement within the text of your manuscript, before your ‘References’ section. So that readers can easily find it, please give it the heading ‘Data availability statement’. Here are a few examples:
The data that support the findings of this study are uploaded along with the manuscript.
The data that support the findings of this study are available. [Please list the URL below].
The data that support the findings of this study were derived from resources available in the public domain. [Please list resources and URLs below].
The data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article [and/or] its supplementary materials.
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.
Due to the nature of the research, due to [ethical/legal/commercial] supporting data is not available.
The participants of this study did not give written consent for their data to be shared publicly, so due to the sensitive nature of the research supporting data is not available.
The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to restrictions e.g. their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.
Other:
Other file types
To share datasets, audio/visual files, and other research output, you can use our submission portal or contact us to discuss suitable options. We will assist you in adding and linking your manuscripts to supplementary files.
Published research articles
If you want to share a manuscript that was already published as a journal article, go to howcanishareit.com and paste the article DOI in the search mask; check if ‘as preprint’ comes up among the accepted publishing formats.
Most academic journals do accept preprint archiving, some don’t. To find out more check the Sherpa/RoMEO database.
Please ensure to respect the applicable copyright and license conditions for the files you upload. For scholarly manuscripts, the most widely used license is CC-BY 4.0.
